


The Final Confession of Shabhira Moons Stalker

by dagas isa (dagas_isa)



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-17
Updated: 2011-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagas_isa/pseuds/dagas%20isa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Any war between the Thalmor and the Imperials over the kingdoms of Elsweyr would leave many Khajiit dead unless there was a way to effectively give one side such an overwhelming advantage that a war could be won without a single arrow being fired in its name.</p><p>The Thalmor had shown me the linchpin that fastened Elsweyr to the empire. And so, I pulled it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Final Confession of Shabhira Moons Stalker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moontyger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/gifts).



Dear Fellow Hunter:

If you are reading this document, I will assume you have read one of the three copies of the confession that I have sent to the Mane, the Thalmor Judiciary, and the Imperial Legate, the one that goes something like:

> I, Shabhira, daughter of Adanji, of the clan Moons Stalker, from the village of Nerula south of Rimmen do confess to acts of conspiracy against the Mane and the Emperor of Tamriel. I have assisted the Thalmor mages in infiltrating the city of Senchal, and have provided information key to the Thalmor's gaining domination over Elsweyr and its subsequent breaking of the empire…

If so, then you already know that I was the Khajiit who vouched for the Altmer mages Irinde and Erissa at the end of the Void Nights and who after their return, quietly encouraged the chain of events that split the former province of Elsweyr into the protectorate kingdoms of Anequina and Pelletine.

This is all true. But it is not all the truth. What follows will be.

Perhaps you doubt me; I have played all sides in this game: The Imperials, the Thalmor, and especially my own Khajiit kin, which I assume you to be by virtue of being able to decipher the code in my confession that led you here. Just over two hundred years from now, my words will be verified by the marks on this very wall. Until then, I have only this: my imprisonment is final, and after all these years, my grand work is finished. There are no more reasons to lie or omit facts regarding the change of powers in the Khajiit kingdoms.

This confession, then, is the final contradictory piece of the puzzle. By revealing the depth of my betrayal to my people, the true extent of my role in the scam that almost singlehandedly lost the Empire an entire province, I will have also proven my loyalty to the Khajiit Clans. For this is more than a mere tale; this is a weapon to be brought against the Thalmor at the right moment.

I do not ask you to listen in order to find me innocent. I ask you to listen so that you will be ready to fight.

\--

If you know little about me, then you should know that I am a suspicious character. I started my education as all Khajiit do, at my mother's side, taking in as much of our ways and gossip and my sharp ears could hold, but unlike most Khajiit, once weaned, I grew thirsty for a wider pool of knowledge and left Elsweyr to see what I could see. I would not return for many years. In fact, my next step into Elsweyr would be as the first Khajiit to advocate for the Thalmor.

Though I had little aptitude for magic, I sought out the ways of the arcane: alchemy, astronomy, the languages of men and mer long extinct. I did not enroll in a magical university. Instead, took delight in gathering my bits and pieces of cleverness subtly. I have spent my time as a peddler at both the Synod and the College of Whispers. I have fetched more forgotten reports than an honest student could write, and gathered up enough drams of troll fat and pinches of fire salts to keep an apothecary's closet stocked for a decade. If there's any court wizard in Cyrodiil who has maintained their post for more than five years, chances are I have disposed of at least one magical experiment that would have seen their head in the executioner's basket. I have learned from them all, and yet not one person could see the aggregate of my knowledge.

For my work, I gained a relative pittance in septims, and a bounty in knowledge. The septims, I spent freely on books, ale, and moon sugar; the knowledge I hoarded. When those around me grew suspicious that I knew too much, I moved on to another promising place, and took on work with another mystic in search of a superstitious fool of an assistant.

It worked out very well for me. I gained much knowledge and few enemies. More importantly, I kept my advantages well hidden, for if there's one thing Nirni will not stand, it is a Khajiit who reveals all she knows.

But since I am already unbearable, I have little room for the shame that would keep me from boasting. Though, at the time of the Void Nights, my fireball could barely roast a goat's leg, my mystic knowledge rivaled even that of an Arch-mage, and that itself was enough to set big things in motion.

\--

It occurs to me that I have no guarantee when this confession should be discovered or how the stories of the Void Nights will be passed from generation to generation. Such dark times are difficult to forget, but it is important enough to remember that I sacrifice brevity in order to deliver a reminder.

The moons simply vanished one night in the 98th year of the Fourth Era. You see why I do not think a true Khajiit would forget this, for the loss of the ja-Kha'jay, the Lunar Lattice, is something unimaginable to one of our kind who has not witnessed it. It lasted two years, until the 2nd of Frost Fall in the 100th year of the Fourth Era.

Khajiit I have talked to since my return to Pelletine have told me about the toll of the Void Nights, or the Barren Years as we called them. Two years without the ja-Kha'jay meant two years without a Moon Sugar harvest and two years of nothing but a few sickly children. By nature, Khajiit are superstitious people, keen to find meaning where others see only coincidences, and so even one of our own might think that we exaggerate the effect, or perhaps that our misfortune was caused by an overreaction. But no, it was truly horrible. Even I, who was so far away from my kind at the time, felt the effects.

I deliver this reminder for a reason: The Void Nights are what made the Khajiit vulnerable to the outside manipulation, and when they return approximately 213 years from the date of this confession, the Khajiit will be vulnerable again. Do not think that because you are far in the future, you are safe in your ignorance. Until you know better, you are only prey.

\--

The disappearance of Masser and Secunda and the start of the Void Nights would prove to be my change of direction. Until that moment that I looked up at Bravil's night sky and its hollowness drove into my bones, I had been a generalist in my collection of knowledge. I knew a bit of alchemy, a bit of magic, soul gem theory, basically bits and pieces from all the mages I worked for, but not enough for a coherent whole.

Yet at the disappearance of the moon, my mother's tales returned to me. When Azurah made us Khajiit, she charged us with the task of hunting the moons should they disappear. In that, I saw how my knowledge was not an end in itself but instead the means I would use to capture my quarry.

I started my hunt at the northern edge of Skyrim. Though the average stone-headed Nord would brawl the moment you said otherwise, Skyrim is not truly the edge of the sky. Still, the clarity of those frozen nights made for an ideal observation post, and the College of Winterhold's extensive-by-Nord-standard's library did not hurt either.

My activities in Skyrim are uninteresting and irrelevant. I drank too much mead and spent too much time at the top of the tower freezing my tail off. And if I wasn't outside, then I was in the library reading every tome I could find related to the skies. It was here that I learned two simple truths about the sky.

First, while there are as many conflicting explanations for the arrangement of the skies, the nature of all the bodies that occupy it, and why they all move, there is a fundamental agreement that the motion of any of these bodies is habitual. This is a simple enough concept to understand: As a day, a year, and the phases of the moon are all habits of the sky, so too are rarer events—the appearance of the third moon, eclipses, and yes, the Void Nights.

Second, short of the interference from Divine or Daedra, no force may change these habits, and not even Mehrunes Dagon seems inclined to knock a planet from its path. Or perhaps even he is not capable of doing so.

These two facts when taken together present a third truth: Given the right tools, anyone can see what the sky will look like at any moment past and future.

That, plus timing, is the entirety of the Thalmor's Dawn Magic. If you thought that magics capable of moving the sky actually existed, I apologize for the necessary disappointment. But I am getting ahead of myself here.

\--

While the discoveries I made at Winterhold gave me a method for tracking the moons, the college itself could not provide the tool I needed to put those methods. This was no matter of trying to figure out the phases of the ja-Kha'jay, or even the impressive but ordinary feat of predicting the next time the moons would eclipse Magnus. Tor something as complex as the coming and going of the Void Nights, a more elaborate tool would be needed, one whose secrets have been mostly lost to the dead.

Dwemer orrerys are not rare in themselves. Most Dwemer ruins of a fair size are likely to have the rudimentary mechanics of one in their tallest tower. An orrery, to put it in the simplest terms, is a machine that imitates the sky. If you were a student of astronomy, you would find a working one to be unimaginably helpful. So too, if you were looking to predict the end of the Void Nights.

But that of course, all depends on finding one with an intact power source with key components still moving and proper calibration. Those things are not so easy to find. And even if you could discover such a treasure in an long-abandoned site, the safety hazards would make extended study impossible. Dwemer ruins are infested with many things that will kill explorers on even the slightest provocation. Your very presence is provocation enough.

This is why I did not head into Avanchnzel or Raldbthar or any of the many other ruins that dotted Skyrim in search of an orrery, but instead headed south into Cyrodiil where the Dwemer had never tread.

\--

If this roundabout path seems illogical to you, then you are likely not a student of the arcane. But if you are, then you will understand why I journeyed to the Imperial City instead of risking my life in the northern ruins. It is true that the Dwemer never settled Cyrodiil and thus never built an orrery there, but at the turn of the 4th Era, when the Mages Guild still held its place as the mystic center of Tamriel, the Imperial City was home to the Arcane University, the largest school of magic to have existed.

Somehow, despite the Oblivion Crisis, the problems with necromancy, and the severe mismanagement of guild resources that would tear the Mages' Guild apart shortly after the ascension of the final Arch-Mage, some short-sighted researcher managed to transfer over and repair an entire orrery. Absolutely amazing. And though the rest of the Arcane University was well picked over until neither the pettiest of soul gems nor the smallest scrap of mystical parchment remained, the orrery itself remained intact.

Getting the key to the former university site and the orrery was not a difficult feat. Simply going to the Imperial Offices and offering to clear out the rats was a good enough tactic to swindle the key. And even if it were not, a humble lockpick would do the trick.

At first I did not think too much on my good fortune. Thieves probably did not realize the worth of the components, or perhaps they were spooked away by the darkness that swallowed torchlight. Or maybe the strong locks on the door did deter theft. The last was impossible enough that I laughed when it occurred to me. As it happened, there actually was a sensible explanation, one I had overlooked.

This would be where the Altmer show up.

\--

I mean the above sentence in a much broader scope than just their place in this confession. The Thalmor's diplomatic procession that arrived in the Imperial City shortly after I settled in was the first time since my grandmother's birth that anyone outside of the elves' former provinces had heard from the Aldmeri Dominion, now consolidating under the Thalmor's control. They approached the Imperial City openly and claimed to seek only mutual understanding between mer and men. However, Altmer are long-lived and nearly as subtle as Khajiit, and so believing that they were not scheming would be the mark of a fool. They came to probe at the weaknesses of the Empire, looking for ways to dismantle it the way one might a ruined wagon in search of spare parts.

To this day, I do not know if the Thalmor mages who approached me had the original intention of taking Elsweyr so quickly or if they were simply interested in the orrery, and in their explorations found—or should I say were encouraged to find—an opportunity to good to pass up.

\--

Their names were Irinde and Erissa, and in our first introduction in the Arcane Orrery, they presented themselves to me as scholars and illusionists.

The elder, Irinde, had been a protégé of Bothiel, the one who repaired the orrery, at the turn of the Era. Bothiel herself had passed away in recent decades, making Irinde the only living person to have maintained the orrery herself. She was the one who confirmed my suspicions that the current darkness of the array meant the device was functioning accurately. It had been Irinde, immediately before the dissolution of the mages guild, who had set the runic traps that would incinerate anyone who attempted to open the machine's case, and it was she who unlocked them.

Erissa, the younger, was apparently famous in Alinor as a prodigy of illusion magic, and was herself a protégé of Irinde. Like all overly skilled illusionists, she had the unsettling habit of being all too flashy sometimes, all too invisible other times, and more than once in my dealings with her, the feelings of red or blue would creep up my neck. Not often and not very strongly, for my mind was well-guarded against magical interference after working in the company of so many mages, but enough to know that she sought to use me.

Unlike other mages, they recognized the scope of my knowledge almost immediately. While I do not delude myself for a moment that they considered me their equal, they humored my interest in the orrery, it was from them that I came to understand the workings of this ancient device.

Or perhaps, "understand the workings" is an overstatement. A more accurate description might be that I came to recognize the heart of the machine. An orrery has over a thousand parts, all of which together require the space of a tower to house it. But of all those thousand, only one means everything. All those other parts exist only to express the will of the one.

The keys lie deep within the heart of the machine, a cylindrical drum, perhaps the length of my forearm and the circumference of a gourd's bottom. Around the circumference of the drum are fifty or sixty thin metal strips, all about the width of the base of my claw, and it was the inscriptions on these metal bands that somehow told the machine how to move the model. When locked in the place, the drum rotates slowly, symbolizing the passage of time. With enough work and enough study one could use such a cylinder to sketch out the sky at any given date, and predict the ending of the Void Nights.

\--

The three of us shared the tower and grew to know each other well. We spoke of the Dwemer and astronomy, topics of mutual interest, Imperial and Thalmor gossip, but the Altmer were interested in Khajiit ways as well, and I believe it did my heart good to be able to talk about home again.

What amazed them, I think, was the depth of the Khajiit's dependence on the Lunar Lattice. To an outsider, it may seem that we only love the moons because they provide us with the moon sugar to make skooma, and while any well-raised Khajiit appreciates the elation of a good moon sugar buzz in the same way an Imperial appreciates their wine or a Nord appreciates their mead, the moon sugar was truly only the smaller part of our crisis.

There was no way to hide this weakness. The Thalmor procession had passed through Elsweyr and seen the chaos. In that respect, I gave away very little that they didn't already know, merely confirmed what they suspected. In return though, they handed me a powerful weapon. You see, it was already well-known to me that the Thalmor looked to dismantle the empire, but they had actually given me the linchpin that fastened Elsweyr to the empire. It was mine to pull.

\--

I have said before, and I will always maintain that I have little interest in politics. I will never be a Clan Mother or an adviser to the Mane. At my heart, I am a scholar and a hunter of wisdom, not a sycophant going to court to bring her clan to prominence. That is a fool's job. It is an even bigger fool's job to do so on behalf of non-Khajiit people.

I have no particular love of either the Imperials or the Thalmor. Both look down on Khajiit and would use us as slaves if they could. Their wars do nothing for us except determine who would try to cheat us out of our lands next.

But do not think that I cannot tell which way a stiff breeze blows.

The Aldmeri Dominion look to build an empire, and failing that, they look to crumble the Imperial's hold over Tamriel. This is a fact. In the time of the Void Nights, Elsweyr was situated in between the old province of Valenwood and Cyrodiil, directly south of the Imperial City. This is also a fact. From there, I do not believe it is too far a leap to think that the Thalmor would look to seize the Khajiit territory from the Imperials.

Any war between the Thalmor and the Imperials over the kingdoms of Elsweyr would leave many Khajiit dead. That was yet another obvious deduction. Unless. Unless there was a way to effectively give one side such an overwhelming advantage that a war could be won without a single arrow being fired in its name.

\--

As we came closer to figuring out the secrets of the brass cylinder, my nose caught wind of the great idea.

We Khajiit have a reputation for being a very superstitious people. This is because we know that many outrageous things are true, and so are capable of believing in very many outrageous things. It is our ability to see so many connections that make us so clever and so easy for others to underestimate.

But our superstition is also our greatest vulnerability. A charlatan could easily take advantage of the Khajiit capacity to believe in the improbable to convince us of falsehoods. And my Altmer acquaintances, as much as I grew to enjoy their company, were disreputable, even for elves.

I knew what hoax they tentatively planned, with or without my involvement. So I jumped in, subtly guiding Elsweyr's way down the least bloody path. Together the three of us worked out the details of the scam: where we would go, how we would tell our stories, who would we talk to. Over the course of the summer, plans emerged, and all we were missing was one vital piece of the puzzle.

Until we had the date of the moons' return nothing could happen, and unless we could discern the date of the moons' return and gain the audience of a powerful Khajiit before their reappearance, our plan would fail.

\--

And finally near the end of Last Seed in the 100th year of the 4th Era, Irinde found the date. The orrery, which had been nearly pitch dark save for our lanterns, brightened considerably.

The good news: We had a date.

The bad news: We had slightly more than a month to travel to Elsweyr and execute our plan.

\--

Had we the luxury of more time, I would have chosen not to have lied to my own mother. I would have taken the Dawn Mages on a tour of Elsweyr, building up their reputation with as many clans as possible, before seeking an audience with the Mane towards the date of the lunar ladder's scheduled returns.

But we did not have more time, and thus to gain enough reputation to bend the Mane's ear, I used my last remaining ties to Elsweyr, my own clan.

In truth, I did not believe even this to be necessary. One only needed to step foot in Khajiit territory to realize how worn out everyone was. If the anxiety had not wiped out all of us, it was only because we lacked the fire in our blood to go to war. I think if we told them that hopping around like rabbits would bring back the moon, they would have spent a week doing just that in the desperate hope it would work. They would have followed the Altmer for the simple certainty of knowing that the moons would return soon.

But I told my mother the story the three of us concocted anyway. Since the disappearance of the ja-Kha'jay, I had been wandering the entirety of Tamriel, looking for the magic that would bring the moons back. I told her that I remembered the story about how the Khajiit came to be, and so I set off to chase the moons, and found the dawn mages who could part the sky.

It was an ancient Altmer ritual, recently unearthed, that would bring the moons back.

That got the attention of the Clan Mother, who then brought the Mane, borne on his palanquin by his company of Cathay-raht. And thus as the dawn came on the second day of Frostfall, we were able to put our plan into motion under the careful gaze of five hundred Khajiit plus several dozen members of other races.

\--

Even all these years later, I remember the feelings of that day, as I took my place in the crowd.

Irinde and Erissa would prepare the ritual with a few of their Thalmor associates they had gathered from the Imperial City, and I would, at the right signal, three repetitions of the Dwemer word for "emerge" draw everybody's attention to the Eastern sky, where the two moons would rise up above the arid grasses at the crescendo of the Thalmor's ritual. If the timing were right, the moons would emerge with nearly a thousand witnesses connecting our performances with that exact moment.

In many ways, I was little different than the other Khajiit in the crowd. I held my breath with them as I listened to the rhythm of the slightly corrupted Dwemer tongue. I watched the spot in the sky where I anticipated the moons emerging from, hoping that the time would be perfect, and recalling with my blood the feel of the moons' rays on my fur.

The moment grew close. Not even the pickpockets were stirring. The energy of the crowd grew tense; the impending return was almost tangible. Good. It made the illusion more convincing. My hand reached around the roll of parchment in my pocket. One claw pressed into its seal and the signal would go. My heart pounded with the thrill of cornering my prey—my clanmates.

"We bid thee rosy Masser and pale Secunda to emerge, emerge so your children should greet you, emerge to that this dry earth may once again to life..."

My signal. My claw broke the seal. Light flashed against the underside of the cloud, and just a sliver of Jode's pink crescent became visible just as the crowd's eyes turned towards the sky.

In that moment, I almost believed. Almost, but not quite.

\--

Executing the Dawn Magic scam was the most difficult and important step in the coup of Elsweyr, but it wasn't the only task assigned to me. I spent the first years after the moons' return traveling across Elsweyr, and spreading word of the Thalmor miracle to all who would listen. By the end of 4E 101, there wasn't a Khajiit in Elsweyr, excepting myself, who didn't at least entertain the possibility that the Altmer Dawn Magics brought back the moons.

What followed after wasn't the quite the bloodless war I had envisioned. Yes, the Khajiit clans by and large supported the Thalmor's increasing influence in Elsweyr and the following secession from the Empire, but not even Imperials give up territory that easily. There were battles above and beyond the usual clan skirmishes and bandits, but in the end as Elsweyr finally split into the protectorate kingdoms of Anequina and Pelletine many hundreds of Khajiit lives were saved, of that I am sure.

My lies were clean lies, and the betrayal of my people, the means of saving them.

That is not to say that the efforts of a traitor are appreciated, even when the ends are good. As I have said, I am not a politician, and while I know the ways of my people, I have never been good with fostering my own good impressions.

I was taken prisoner in 113. It was my misfortune to be visiting the city of Riverhold during the Imperial's last major bid for control of the Northern border. My identity as the Thalmor's campaigns main Khajiit advocate was revealed, and a trumped up charge involving the theft of a copy of "The Lusty Argonian Maid" and a pair of calipers kept me in prison. And as I knew they would, the Thalmor distanced themselves from me. After all, once Elsweyr was mostly in their control, I was useless to them. More than useless, I was dangerous, for I alone understood how empty their promises were.

\--

I suppose it is foolish to maintain my innocence when I have spent the last twenty years in this cell on a single charge of minor larceny, but among the Khajiit, the Thalmor, and the Imperials who have been juggling control of this border city since the formation of the Kingdoms, all have as little reason to advocate for my freedom as they do to kill me. The Khajiit know I have exposed our weakness to outsiders and have shown favor to elves over kin. The Thalmor know that among the Khajiit, I alone know for sure that the dawn magics are a scam. It is best then to have me somewhere they can watch me. And as for the Imperials…

It's a miracle that they did not choose to execute me when they had the chance, but that is for the best. I was not eager to die with work unfinished. Imprisonment didn't matter. I still had the orrery cylinder in my possession and a lifetime's left of work to do with it. My cell contained a small window the sky, a single dull iron dagger and enough paper and ink to write this confession. But all this was enough for me to plan my final move.

The Thalmor currently allow the two Khajiit protectorates relative freedom, but this will not always be so. One day, their control over Tamriel will solidify, or perhaps in the return of the Void Nights they will see another opportunity. But they will seek to tighten the irons around our wrists and dazzle us with their tricks.

But they have only one trick for dealing with the Khajiit, and it is the one I taught them. And now I teach you who are reading this, the inner workings of that one, and I give you the materials to learn more.

If you have found this confession in my cell, then I ask that you raise your torch to the wall. If somehow, my confession has left the cell, then travel to the city of Riverhold and ask to see Shabhira's cell, and then raise your torch to the wall. The indentations you see are not a count of the many sunrises and sunsets I have spent in the cell since my imprisonment. Notice how they go in bands around the room like the strips of metal wrapped around an orrery's drum. If you learn to read them, you will learn how to read the very procession of the sky itself.

The neither the Imperials nor the elves understood the significance of the cylinder I smuggled in, and the guards never once recognized the significance of the patterns I mark on the wall. But if you have read and understood my confession, then you will understand.

That is the advantage I give you, fellow hunter. Use it wisely.

Yours,  
Shabhira, daughter of Adanji, of the clan Moons Stalker  
4E 127


End file.
